Learning how not to rely on one's PhD advisor

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Anxiously Attached writes:

I don't think I'm alone in this, and I'm looking for advice from those who've gone through it or something like it.

I have an excellent relationship with my advisor. With his guidance, my mediocre ideas become significantly less mediocre, and even, on occasion, quite interesting. I've worked with other professors and, to be honest, we're on the same wavelength in ways that I haven't experienced with others.

While I'm incredibly grateful to be working with them, I'm also a bit anxious about what's to come. At some point, I'll move on, ideally to a job, and it will be less and less appropriate for me to lean on my advisor to lift up my work and make it more intelligible. What can I do to prepare for this? Should I just hold on as long as possible? Will I get more confident in my own work as I become more independent?

These are very good questions. Timmy J. submitted the following response:

My own adviser told me that most of the point of grad school is to get voices in your head. You get your adviser’s voice is your head. You get some of your cohortmate’s voices in your head. Maybe you get frege or Kant or whoever’s voice in your head. Then you leave but the voices stay and some large portion of the help they could give before they can still give later, albeit in a disembodied way. Yeah yeah it’s weird and mystical and whatever. But it sorta helps me deal, and maybe it’ll help you too.

This seems right to me (I still bear in mind many lessons that I learned from my advisor). However, I don't think they are the only way to handle the OP's situation--and I also think it can be critical to develop one's own voice, as it were, becoming one's 'own philosopher' (there are, for example, some preconceptions about research that I was taught in graduate school that I now firmly reject). In any case, what other strategies are there? One strategy that I have seen is for people to slowly wean themselves off of their advisor, staying in close contact with them for their first few years out of graduate school, meeting with them via Zoom, sharing work, etc. My sense is that this can work if one's advisor is a caring and conscientious person, particularly given that advisors can want their former students to succeed. Not all advisors are like this, however--and so, one might very well find oneself 'ripped away' from being able to rely on them. In that case, my sense is that one's situation can be very much akin to being thrown into the deep end of a pool and simply having to learn how to swim. 

Long story short, I don't think there's just one way to answer the OP's questions. I think a lot depends on you (are you 'naturally independent' or someone who really needs support networks?), on your advisor (are they willing to stay in close contact and be helpful once you graduate?), and on context (is your first job out of graduate school in a large research department or small department with high teaching loads?). Because things can differ so much, I'm very curious to hear from readers. How did you handle the kinds of issues the OP asks about? Did your strategy work well or not?

Finally, I do want to say a few things about the OP's third and final question: "will I get more confident in my own work as I become more independent?". My sense is that you probably will. My own advisor once told me in graduate school that at some point, one undergoes a transformation of sorts. You begin to realize that, whereas for your entire academic career as a student, you had to satisfy your professors with your work, now the main person you need to satisfy is yourself. Sure, you need to convince referees to publish your work. But, at some point, you'll get a sense of how to do that while being the kind of philosopher you want to be. And, in my experience, it can be a really wonderful experience, generating not only a kind of confidence in your work, but indeed, a kind of confidence that doesn't depend so much on others for validation (which, I think, can be a really liberating experience). But again, this is just my experience. What's yours?

Comments

[William Vanderburgh]

I'd add one thing to Marcus's thoughtful reply, which is that starting the weaning doesn't need to wait until after you defend. Start forming relationships with people at other institutions while you are still a grad student. This can be asking questions via email, requesting them to read a draft, etc. Try to get to some conferences and meet people in person. Don't make encounters transactional, make them relational. (Philosophers are a weird bunch, some of these attempts will fail.) I think you'd have most luck with more junior folks (including fellow grad students and post-docs) rather than more senior/famous people--the famous folks already have full dance cards and are less likely to be incentivized to give you their time.

Having these connections will be valuable in your first post-PhD job, too, since most of the time the department that hires you will be full of people already busy with their own work and lives and it can be quite lonely (especially if you had a rich community in grad school).

[Michel]

I think that's all pretty much right.

Part of grad school is building a network of peers at different stages of their careers whom you can turn to for help (both from your home department, but also through conferencing). When you graduate, IMO these are your main helpers.

You can (and should!) also use conferences to get that kind of help from the audience (and, again, to start building your professional relationships).

I also think your main (but not exclusive!) publication focus after defending should be your dissertation. It's already been through multiple rounds of peer review, and certified good! It'll take some work to get it ship-shape for publication, but most of that work is already done, whereas for a new paper, you'd have to start from scratch.

For my own part, I got a *huge* boost of confidence from defending successfully that's never gone away. It's ebbed a bit at times, but defending just set my baseline confidence *a lot* higher. It took me a little while to get the hang of publishing, but once I had a few under my belt (including dissertation papers), I developed a pretty much unshakeable confidence. I still get a lot of rejections, and for perfectly good reasons. But now I know for sure that I have good ideas and can get them published in good venues, so there's a lot less at stake for me. I don't feel like I have to prove my chops to anyone any more. (All I have to do is attract sympathetic readers!)

(FWIW, conferencing did something similar for me, too. I've done *a lot* of it--much less since defending, however!--and there came a point where I knew I could get most of my papers accepted to a conference, and that I wouldn't embarrass myself in the presentation and Q&A. That was a huge breakthrough, and it helped me to stop taking rejections personally.)

[Heather Wallace]

There is a growing trend for academic authors to work with developmental editors. (Full disclosure: I do this type of work, and I have a growing client base among professional philosophers.)

An editor specializes in making your work more intelligible and can give your work the sustained, detailed attention that colleagues can't always afford to give it. Developmental editors engage with your writing, but also with your ideas, your argument, and the structure of your paper. Each author has individualized needs, but some of the ways I've helped authors include: help them identify which ideas belong in this particular paper and which should go somewhere else; help them see missing steps in the argument, or potential connections to other ideas; help them determine the most effective organization of their ideas to reach non-specialist readers; help them identify the core thesis or narrative (and the progression of chapters) in a book manuscript.

It's definitely a different dynamic to turn to a paid professional for this kind of feedback, but it is a viable way to get very personalized support for your work (and it is an option for one way to use research funds).

I love the quote about the voices in your head: and I think many scholars have never heard the voice of their reader as they work through their papers. That is how I think about the job of editing--making that conversation between reader and writer explicit.

[Assistant Professor]

I like two points Michel made: that conferencing and defending can help build confidence.

To me a benefit of conferencing is learning how to think on your feet - or rather to demonstrate to yourself that you know your topic well enough to think on your feet in response to whatever questions come your way. I realize this is its on unique skill, and one that not everyone enjoys or wants to cultivate in our discipline. But finding your own style to respond to others in ways that demonstrate your knowledge and abilities is really helpful.

My dissertation chair told me after my defense that he asked me hard questions during the defense to demonstrate to the other committee members that I am their peer in my ability to answer those tough questions. Whether it worked on how they see me, telling me that illustrated that HE viewed me as a peer and expert, and I thought that was such a great defense present.

Unlike Michel, though, I think working on new projects that haven't had the eyes and comments of other mentors on them can actually be really helpful to feel free from the guidance and expectations of others - especially if those things get published!

[walking the first step]

This is a wonderful post. Fresh out of graduate school into the tenure clock, I have no clue as for how much I can continue relying on my old advisers. Because I have relied a lot on feedback during graduate school (though I always had my own philosophical ideas and projects), this is a radically new experience. For the record, I haven't had anything independently written with zero feedback pre-referee published yet, so we will see...! Ultimately, I find independence fun and satisfying (despite no publication yet).